Hinos creep in by the back door
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HINO's long-anticipated assault on the British market is coming next month. The Dublin-based Harris enterprise has leased a parts and distribution centre in Cheshire, and has already run into complaints of "back door" importing from manufacturers and trades unions.
HCV Motor Vehicles Ltd has leased a 42,000sqft factory in Warrington new town, from which it will distribute three types of the Irish-built Japanese lorry and spare parts, and it plans to have ten dealers in time for the vehicle's launch next month.
Company managing director Liam O'Neill told CM this week that he hopes to sell 500 Hinos in Britain in the first year, and he claimed that they would compete more with European than British vehicles.
Top of the range will be the 38.5tonne HE336 tractive unit, powered either by a 258bhp Japanese engine or the Cummins NT290, and fitted with a Fuller gearbox. Already a Cummins/Fuller combination is in Britain, he said.
Also being offered are the ZM312 24-tonne 6x4 tipper / mixer chassis, and the ZM342 8x4. The company is reluctant to announce prices, claiming that dealers have still to be informed.
Nor would Mr O'Neill be drawn on the size of the War rington operation, saying simply that HCV is looking at another site in the Warrington area at which Hinos would be built for Britain and Europe.
He claims that the vehicles contain a high proportion of British parts, including Lucas electrics and Bendix Westinghouse brakes, but this has done nothing to quell the boiling anger of Britain's recession-hit firms.
They say that the plans fly in the face of Japanese manfactuners' assurances earlier this year that they would not break into the over-3.5 tonne United Kingdom market, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders seems dubious about the claims of large British content.
In common with Leyland Vehicles, it is concerned about the level of local assembly, even in Dublin. The feeling is that so-called completely-knocked down Hino kits are, in fact, vehicles which have reached a late stage of assembly.
And SMMT fears that vehicles may be "dumped" on the market for less than the going rate.
SMMT says it has ways of dealing with any infringement of the agreement with Japan, and more specific action has been proposed by Transport and General Workers Union officials in Somerset.
Bridgwater district secretary Tom Searle renewed his twoyear-old pledge this week to seek to have Hinos blacked by TGWU members. He told CM he would call for dockers — especially on Merseyside—to refuse to unload them, for British drivers to refuse to work in them, and for other workers not to load or unload any Hinos, regardless of the operators country of origin.
• Sales down in July, p4.